Sure, they’re nothing special, but they were intense at the time. Especially for a bunch of summer interns that had the misfortune of needing to find employment during a recession. I was an engineering student and my cohorts were all in the sciences as well. For being a job that required hammering, measuring, and not getting hit by traffic it was one of the more stimulating jobs I’ve ever worked.

So the typical process for us was to drive to the site, usually it was just a road segment from a list (3-5 year annually rotating lists). We had a truck bed filled with precut hoses, solar powered counting modules, spikes, and then wire mesh hose retainers. We would get the appropriate size hose, slip on retainers, hammer in the spikes, and attach and program the module.

One day a fellow in a pickem’up truck followed us from one road to the next telling us that we had no authority to be there and he would sue if we didn’t take our computers and leave. The next day, at a completely different part of the city (honestly, I have no idea how he found us) he jumped out of his truck and racked a shell in his shotgun. We all just left everything and got in the truck and drove away with him standing there shit talking. The equipment was gone but the police knew the guy. They got our stuff back. They didn’t get my buddies coffee thermos though and he was pretty bent out of shape about that. I think it was old or his dad’s or something. But never saw that guy again.

We would constantly get approached by homeless people who wanted to know what we were doing. I always tried to be as informative as possible but most of the time the basic concept was too confounding. The orange vests were always a problem. One guy asked me why I only have one cone. I still laugh about that today. Just the question. Fucking hilarious. The things you don’t think to ask. It was completely legit too. We were daily put in situations where we were inches from traffic. A single cone and a truck were the only things between oncoming traffic and our faces. Why only one cone? We had to cross roads to attach the hose on the other side. If we require a cone for traffic going this way, why don’t we require one going that way? Is the cone FOR THE TRUCK?!?

What a treasure of a memory that was.

EDIT:

I forgot, there was a contractor who did the leftover work that was occasionally needed the rest of the year, but he was always out of work during the summer and he didn’t like that. So one night I was driving past one of the modules that we set up the week before and there was a frumpy looking guy walking back to his car that was parked very near it on the sidewalk. So the next day I found out who he was from the supervisor and went to the site to check it out. He had unlocked the module and slipped in a piece of paper that just said, “you’re a removed”. Fucking ROFL.